Eve Online developer CCP Games has announced that it has secured $40m in funding to create a blockchain game set in the Eve universe. Describing its new project as an "innovative new AAA game", CCP says the as-yet-untitled endeavor will "further the company's mission".
Partners involved in securing CCP's financing for the new blockchain game include Makers Fund, Kingsway Capital, and Nexon, as well as "additional participants", according to an official announcement. The game is currently codenamed Project Awakening, if the official website is anything to go by. No official name, release window, or gameplay description has been released yet.
As you might expect, the announcement for the new CCP game is full of the kind of blockchain buzzwords that many of these types of announcements use. CCP promises "smart-contract blockchain technology", "key game systems developed on-chain", and "persistence, composability and truly open third-party development".
Back in April last year, CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson said that his studio had "no plans" to incorporate blockchain technology into its wildly successful space MMO Eve Online. This new announcement might seem like a contradiction of that intent, but since Eve Online itself still isn't getting blockchain tech, building a spinoff game around the blockchain doesn't contravene Pétursson's promise.
It's also worth noting that according to CCP, this new project "is separate from current and previously disclosed projects", including Eve Online itself. This also means that the Eve Online shooter currently in the works at Sperasoft isn't related to this new blockchain game, so if you're looking forward to that but you're a Web 3.0 skeptic, you can breathe easy.
The blockchain is far from the strangest Eve Online crossover we've seen in recent years. The long-running MMO has enjoyed content crossovers with properties like British sci-fi show Doctor Who, as well as, uh, software packages like Microsoft Excel. Given Eve Online's reputation as a spreadsheet simulator, though, that does make a certain kind of sense. Stay tuned to TechRaptor for more info about whatever CCP's Eve blockchain game becomes in future.
